Goals
The overall goals are brainstormed at the team meeting. Goals are most often set as year-long goals; however, it is possible to define a component of an ISSP which will be less than one year in duration. In any case, the goals are more long term projections of what the child will have attained. The timeframe will be determined by the child's needs.
It is pointless to develop an ISSP with so many goals that it would take years to complete. Since there might be many goals which the team would like the child to attain, it is important that the team priorize these and derive from them a reasonable and attainable set of goals which can be accomplished, usually within one year. These goals are part of the ISSP. Sometimes the priorities of various team members might not coincide. A consensus building process must be used to resolve conflicting priorities, since it is unproductive to try and accomplish an unreasonable set of goals in a given timeframe.
Goals are global statements which define what instruction/intervention in a particular area is ultimately leading to. It should give your day-to-day work a sense of purpose, since it is what you are striving toward. The degree of specificity of the goal depends entirely on the anticipated rate at which the child will likely work toward the goal. For example, two children may be working toward improving their ability to handle criticism. For one child whose progress has been very slow in this particular area, the goal may be "to maintain constructive behaviour for one hour per day". Based on previous coaching and experience, the other child is anticipated to work at a quick pace with respect to maintaining positive reaction pattern. The goal for this child for the same time period may be to "react positively 8 hours per day". The measure of specificity must always be the individual child and what you project will be the progress in this area in the given time frame.
It may be helpful, once the strengths, needs and goals have been decided upon, to organize the strengths and needs as they relate to specific goals or at least to the area which the goal is targeted. This facilitates the process of writing objectives (outcomes) later, since the strengths in a goal area represent the starting points and the needs in that area can be worked into the specific objectives (outcomes) leading toward the goal.
